Re: Screen Brightness

You mentioned, "The second image seems fine to me from a brightness standpoint, but I run my screen at 120 candela / square meter and that is a bit lower than most people would set it."

How do you measure the screen brightness? I mention this because, although I have not played with calibrating my new monitor yet, it seems quite bright...

As Dave has done, I used calibration / profiling software that shipped with my ColorMunki.

I find that straight out of the box, computer screens have been set too bright. When I used my old i1, I ran at 110 candela / square meter, but converted to 120 when I bought the ColorMunki, just to use a more "standard" setting. I still find it a bit on the bright side, for my basement working environment.

Re: Screen Brightness

In the absence of anything to measure with, if you view the brightness setting and it is up around 90-100% of the range (usually there's a bar graph), then turn it down to somewhere in the area of 50-70%.

Or can you get a specific image displayed on your old monitor, then using a camera exposure meter (pointed at screen only and avoiding ambient influence), determine the 'exposure'. Swap back to new monitor and adjust brightness for same exposure.
At least then you should be consistent with previous editing.

However, having purchased such a nice monitor, it would make sense to get the kit and calibrate properly, what I suggest is only as a stop-gap.

Re: Screen Brightness

You mentioned, "The second image seems fine to me from a brightness standpoint, but I run my screen at 120 candela / square meter and that is a bit lower than most people would set it."

How do you measure the screen brightness? I mention this because, although I have not played with calibrating my new monitor yet, it seems quite bright...

As has been said, the best way is to use one of the calibration kits.

If, like myself, you are stubbornly resisting the use of a kit then you can actually measure the cd/m2 with your camera.

Long ago, I had a need to measure the brightness of luminous watch hands. With the help of the well-respected Doug Kerr, we developed a method which uses ISO equations backwards to get the answer. You can read about that in my old blog here:

You'd shoot a screen with pure white areas of course. I would recommend camera settings of 'Base' ISO, sRGB and DayLight WB, perhaps doing a white balance but definitely not messing with anything else like EC, Contrast, etc.

I would shoot a big white area close up (even touching) so as to avoid obfuscation by the Inverse Square Law and of course would de-focus the lens - infinity should work well enough.

I wrote the article before knowing much about photography; therefore, I would be interested in any comments about the method.

My own comment is that the camera's ISO accuracy becomes involved and the Recommended Exposure Index (REI), colloquially known as "the ISO setting", should preferably have been been determined by the manufacture's use of the saturation-based method. Note too that, within the ISO standard, there are "latitudes" allowing the manufacturer's REI to be something like10% off; therefore, I would take the result as being an estimate, i.e. not exact. Calibration kits should do better than that, I'd think.

Re: Screen Brightness

It's pretty normal for new screens to come way to bright. It makes the dynamic range figures look better. I use a ColorMonki and the software I use tells me how bright to set the screen based on ambient levels.

If some one doesn't have a colorimeter there are lots of custom icc profiles here - results are usually very good and far better than how monitors are usually supplied. Might be worth checking to see if your monitor is listed.